This invention relates to a basket for an orbital washer of the type described in U.S. Patent application Ser. No. 39,406, filed May 15, 1979 by John Bochan, assigned to the instant assignee and incorporated herein by reference thereto. One type of basket for an orbital washer is described in my prior U.S. Patent application Ser. No. 98,226, filed Nov. 28, 1979, assigned to the instant assignee and incorporated herein by reference thereto.
An orbital washer as described in the above-cited U.S. Patent application, Ser. No. 39,406, employs a drive system, such as an eccentric gear drive system, which moves the basket in a particular generally horizontal orbital motion during its clothes washing and rinsing cycles. During the spin cycle, the basket is centered and rotated rapidly to remove excess water from the clothes.
As described in the above-cited U.S. Patent application Ser. No. 98,226, motion of clothes inside a basket driven in an orbital path is caused by interaction of the cloth with the basket bottom and side wall. With a circular basket having a bottom slope generally upwardly from the outer cylindrical wall toward the central post, clothes tend to move in a helical path continuously about the circumference of the basket. Energy is transferred from the basket to the clothes by interaction of the clothes with the interior surfaces of the basket, generating turbulent motion and thereby washing of the clothes by contact with the basket and other items of the clothes load. The shapes of the surfaces of the basket which contact the clothes determine the pattern of motion of clothes within the basket during orbiting thereof. A desirable objective of basket design is to expose all portions of the clothes to be washed to contact with the interior surfaces of the basket to optimize washing action. The above-cited U.S. Patent application Ser. No. 98,226 describes an unsymmetrical basket design to achieve turbulence and mixing of clothes within the basket.